Movie Review: Trespassers (2018)

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AKA: Hell Is Where the Home Is

In this ambitious work of home invasion horror based upon Jean-Paul Sartre's existential play No Exit, the action is set not in a single room in hell but a deserted rental property in SoCal where "you can check out any time you'd like but you can never leave"* … especially not when there are masked men with machetes waiting outside.

Still reeling from a personal tragedy that's taken a toll on their marriage, Sarah (Angela Trimbur) and her husband Joseph (Zach Avery) arrive at the modern home they've rented, ready to meet up with her wild high school best friend Estelle (Janel Parrish) and Estelle's boyfriend Victor (Jonathan Howard).

The type of guy that goes on vacation with his girlfriend and within the first five minutes, asks a guy he's never met if he wants to go check out some strip clubs, Victor might not have much of a filter but we learn on night two that what he does have is street sense.

Telling the others not to open the door when a stranger comes knocking after dark, after the bespectacled woman with car trouble (played by Fairuza Balk) says she needs to come in and use the phone, his antennae immediately goes up. Announcing that he wishes they could go back in time "five minutes and leave the f***ing door closed," Victor's concerns get ignored, perhaps less because of any point he's trying to make than no one else wanting to admit that a guy like Victor might be right.

And right, we gather, is precisely what he is when Balk wanders in, eavesdrops, offers weird unsolicited advice like, "sometimes you can't stop what's coming," and seems to be in no hurry to leave, especially not after she tells whoever she calls on the phone that she's waiting, "here with her four lovely new friends."

Remembering the eerie opener, in which a group of masked men with machetes abduct the homeowners and dispatch them outdoors, we know whatever is coming for the four won't be good.

Emotions running on high — fueled by the stress of the situation and Victor's drugs — long before the inevitable weapon-wielding tormentors show up, they begin to torment one another as long-held secrets and pent-up anger come tumbling out.

An unorthodox work of horror, with so much interpersonal drama going on, the success of Trespassers depends upon how invested we are in the characters overall. Though elevated by its affable cast — most notably the excellent Parrish and Howard who brings the film considerably to life — with so little backstory revealed or time spent developing their characters as people, we don't really know who they are (or care much at all). Not involved enough to give any serious thought to who breaks or makes up throughout, as we watch the leads fight, we feel like we're eavesdropping Fairuza Balk style.

Nonetheless ratcheting up the intensity enough to deliver a slam-bang final act, one of the things I admired most about Corey Deshon's script is that a moral quandary following a frenzied confrontation is what ultimately kicks it into high gear. Raising a (suitably) existential question of what you can live with and how you define right and wrong, while it doesn't marinate over the moment long because — in a horror movie especially — every action causes an equal or opposite reaction and violence begets violence, it's still a refreshing way to disrupt a formula we know by heart. Slightly above average in that respect, unfortunately one clever twist doesn't make up for its ho-hum first half.

With genre working to its advantage, director Orson Oblowitz's Trespassers is the type of film that should play better streaming than on the big screen because, as a home invasion scarer, it makes you look over your shoulder enough that you'll be eager to recommend it to others and/or share it with a friend. And once Trespassers really commits to Sartre's idea that "hell is other people" based on our tendency to think after and not before we do something, everything from the film's cast to its pacing becomes compellingly frantic and machete level sharp.

* "Hotel California," by The Eagles

Text ©2019, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Netflix Movie Review: Velvet Buzzsaw (2019)

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A satirical horror movie set in the modern art world, whether you're looking for a late night thrill or don't mind working a little harder to engage with a film on a deeper level, Velvet Buzzsaw will surely do.

Filled with witty wordplay and morbid metaphors brought vividly to life, in the weird and wonderful multi-layered third work from writer-director Dan Gilroy, even the character names are entertaining.

From Jake Gyllenhaal's taste-making art critic Morf Vandewalt, whose body language, voice, and taste morphs from one scene to the next to Rene Russo's gallery owner Rhodora Haze, whose Lolita-esque last name alludes as much to her younger days as a sexy, hard-living punk rocker (in the titular band) as it does her hazy business ethics, there's a lot here to savor.

Rather than opt for a traditional first person narrative, Gilroy's film takes a cue from Altman's oeuvre with its approach to storytelling. Set at the intersection of art and commerce where creativity is overshadowed by talk of demand, money, and the market, Buzzsaw revolves around a handful of characters who play very different roles in the industry from assistants and installers to artists and museum curators.

Led by Gyllenhaal and Russo (who co-starred in Gilroy's feature filmmaking debut Nightcrawler), Buzzsaw co-stars Toni Colette, John Malkovich, Zawe Ashton, Daveed Diggs, Natalia Dyer, Tom Sturridge, and Billy Magnussen who all seem to delight in Gilroy's mischievous script, which satirizes the commoditization of art in a way that could just as easily apply to film, publishing, or music.

Though undoubtedly anchored by Gyllenhaal's Vanderwalt, who looks like he had the time of his life on this film, Buzzsaw's real breakout turn is Zawe Ashton as Russo's ambitious assistant Josephina, who stumbles onto an apartment filled with art after her elderly neighbor dies with no heirs.

Initially entering the apartment to find and feed his cat, even though the man had left explicit instructions to destroy his art upon his death, Josephina can't resist bringing some to Morf to evaluate.

Fascinated by her discovery, with Morf's ecstatic approval, she teams up with the scheming Rhodora Haze to curate a show, destined to make her a superstar.

Soon after, the deceased Vitril Dease becomes the hottest name in art but as Morf digs into his past for a book and uncovers one disturbing story after another, he realizes a bit too late that the darkness pouring off the canvas and into the lives of those around him, which has resulted in multiple deaths, might be connected to Dease.

Lensed by Robert Elswit, the There Will Be Blood cinematographer makes the most of Gilroy's inventive frames right from the start as we explore a bizarre modern art convention in Miami where certain phrases (either in lights or spoken by an art installation robot) add another layer of foreshadowing and character revelation to the film. Needless to say (and fortunately for Netflix), Velvet Buzzsaw is designed to play even better on repeat viewings when we can take in every element.

Sure to be Netflix's next big post-Bird Box hit, with darkly comedic witticisms, up-to-the-minute satire, and shocking comeuppances performed by its stellar cast, Gilroy replaces the pre-credit shock sequence and familiar jump scares of retro horror fare with something irresistibly, thrillingly new.

Dare I say, I think Morf Vanderwalt would approve.

Text ©2019, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Blu-ray Review: Await Further Instructions (2018)

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Bringing home a new romantic partner to meet the parents is always stressful but traditionally it's hardest on the outsider.

Not so in the case of Nick (Sam Gittins) in Await Further Instructions who, mere moments into the movie, pulls into the driveway of his family home after a long drive and is instantly ready to put the car into reverse, asking his girlfriend Annji (Neerja Naik), "can we not do this?" before adding, "we're going to ruin everyone's Christmas."

It's the last half of Nick's plea that gives us pause and in the hands of another screenwriter might've been used to dig a little deeper into the mind of our main character but is employed in Johnny Kevorkian's movie like a jump scare, reminding us that we're watching a horror movie by foreshadowing the darkness to come.

Giving in to his girlfriend's wish to meet the family that the audience is already primed to be suspicious of before they give us cause, Nick introduces Annji to his people-pleaser mother (Abigail Cruttenden), racist grandfather (David Bradley), his bitter father (Grant Masters), heavily pregnant sister (Holly Weston), and brother-in-law (Kris Saddler).

From lewd comments about Nick being under his girlfriend's spell (only in much coarser language) to rude cracks about foreign doctors or ignorantly accusing Annji of sneaking Indian words into a Scrabble game, as Nick sticks up for them both in a series of escalating arguments, his reasons for not going home for three years suddenly become crystal clear.

Tired from the long day and in no shape to drive, they vow to make a run for it the next morning before everyone wakes up. Unfortunately, Nick and Annji are greeted with the horror movie equivalent of a lump of coal in their Christmas stocking when they open the front door of the house and discover that a mysterious, solid, and indeed black-as-coal substance has trapped them indoors without any communication to the outside world, save for the ominous titular message on the TV to "await further instructions."

With everyone's minds working overtime as they fear the worst and the TV flashing increasing demands at them (which Nick's military oriented grandfather and office manager father are all too willing to follow no questions asked), the young couple must try to find a way out of an even more impossible situation before the family either turns on each other or loses their minds.

An allegory about the dangers of television combined with a pitch black, cynical twist on the holiday season that warns you can never go home again or you may risk not leaving, Await Further Instructions feels like it would make an intriguing triple feature with the thematically similar, albeit vastly superior horror entries It's a Disaster and The Invitation.

Yet while the idea by screenwriter Gavin Williams is a good one in theory, by not bothering to develop the characters beyond the subtlety of an axe that Nick uses to try and knock down the mysterious wall keeping them in, we find we feel very little connection to our protagonists.

Likewise by taking all of the mystery and intrigue out of Instructions in favor of an over-reliance on not so much sci-fi horror special effects as chaotic visual excess, in the end we're left with one big mess that ruins the impact of the film's otherwise inventive premise.

Heavily stylized but narratively empty, Kevorkian wears his '80s era horror influences proudly throughout this work of budget British horror and while both he and Williams exhibit occasional flashes of potential, somewhere along the way they managed to trap themselves inside the heart of the film as well with no idea how to get out...except by chopping at the plot's brains with an axe.

Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

DVD Review: The Witch Files (2018)

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Once upon a time the Project Greenlight co-winner for Battle of Shaker Heights, although Kyle Rankin admits that only after filmmaking fads are past their prime that that's when he thinks he might want to make one, the Night of the Living Deb director's first foray into found footage horror is mostly a success.

Set in and around a Brunswick, Maine high school where five girls from different backgrounds become unlikely friends after a new student manages to set off the fire alarm with her mind and gets them released from detention, The Witch Files is presented as a series of clips compiled by security cameras as well as digital footage shot by the characters themselves.

And even though, as the school’s Queen Bee Brooke (Alice Ziolkoski) jokes, "trying to be a witch in Brunswick is like wearing Mouse ears at Disney," the girls are intrigued enough that they ask the faux firestarter Jules (Britt Flatmo) to teach them how it was done.

Agreeing to meet her at midnight in the middle of a park where (rumor has it) witches were murdered over two hundred years ago, as soon as words are chanted and locks of hair are buried, the five bond together to form a coven.

Starting out small while testing out their newfound powers, once they realize they can levitate not only a book but brainy high school reporter Claire (Holly Taylor), things quickly escalate.

From money-free shopping sprees to wishing for Brooke's mom to stop hitting the bottle and Claire's unemployed dad to find the perfect job, Brunswick's newest witches start using their powers to fulfill their every wish before they learn that nothing in life is free.

Discovering that even spells made with the best of intentions have consequences, members of the coven start suffering from strange side effects including double root canals and early onset arthritis.

Scared enough that some of the girls refuse to tempt fate anymore, when it becomes apparent that their powers are now strong enough that they don't actually need the entire coven to continue to cast spells, witch is pitted against witch.

With each girl wondering not only what is real but also who they can trust, a battle begins brewing which could bring down everyone in the process unless Claire can get to the bottom of what's really going on in Brunswick before it's too late.

Penned by Rankin and Larry Blamire, Witch's whip smart script is delivered very handily by its talented cast, especially frequent scene stealer Ziolkoski and the always authentic Americans MVP Taylor as well as Criminal Minds actress Paget Brewster (who also produced) as a local police detective.

Sure to appeal to those who enjoyed Pretty Little Liars, from his Breakfast Club inspired beginning, Witch feels like an amalgamation of everything from Heathers to Charmed to The Craft and as such, it has more than its share of amused smiles than scares.

And while its obviously rushed shoot does hinder a few scenes which just don't deliver the full impact of the words on the page, Witch still manages to impress nonetheless with some terrific wire-work stunts and special effects that up its thrill value (which you can explore in the special features).

Threatened to be overlooked in the October onslaught of big budget horror movies pouring onto streaming sites in time for Halloween, for those looking for something off the beaten path that you can safely show your teens which (like many films in the genre) has a worthwhile moral buried within the found footage story, this Witch is for you.

Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Blu-ray Review: The Row (2018)

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Rush Week turns into Hurry Up and Run Week when a serial killer starts targeting members of a top group on campus described early on by our virginal heroine Riley's (Lala Kent) stereotypically slutty best friend Becks (Mia Rose Frampton) as "if Victoria's Secret was a sorority" in director Matty Beckerman's lackluster, low-budget slasher movie.

Shot and styled like a Girls Gone Wild video with an emphasis on skin and sin in the social media era, this feeble attempt to deliver a new spin on classic horror loses its audience almost as soon as it starts.

Hindered not only by its one-dimensional characters and wooden acting, The Row is also as generic as it is predictable as most people, with the exception of the purportedly brainy Riley – who's supposed to be a natural at this thanks to her police officer father (Randy Couture) – will have no trouble identifying the obvious killer within the first twenty minutes of the movie.

But instead of keeping her guard up after she finds the first dead body in a late night game of hide and seek, as she navigates college as an incoming freshman, Riley takes a walk on the kegger side.

Plunging head-first into Greek life, after Riley discovers that her late mother – about whom she knows very little – had also been a member of the same exclusive sorority, she dives in even deeper.

Paying homage to the genre’s obsession with mother issues – starting as far back as Hitchcock's Psycho and then crystallizing in subsequent generations with Friday the 13th and Scream – The Row attempts to serve up an interesting enough mystery to keep us invested in the classic horror trope.

And while to her credit, screenwriter Sarah Scougal drops a few threads and red herrings along the way that could've led to a more complex denouement, instead of following through on its promised twists, she gives in and opts for the easiest solution.

It's a shame too because with a stronger cast, more self-awareness, humor, and imagination (think Heathers meets Mean Girls, and Scream), this could've been an entertainingly campy thriller.

However, with otherwise talented cinematographer Jamie Barber's camera seemingly devoted to zooming in on women's bodies to the point that sometimes all we see is a rear and a colorful thong to introduce us to a new soon-to-be dead character, The Row never rises above the obsessive mindset of our predator killer who opts to treat the coeds like interchangeable dolls. Thus, it's trash instead of camp.

When you combine this approach with its laughable opening sequence in which Randy Couture almost runs down a key character who will coincidentally factor in later, let's just say that subtlety is not the film’s strong suit.

And neither, as it turns out is suspense as The Row wastes three potential suspects by doing nothing with them to help generate more mystery or tension before it suddenly offers an explanation that, amusingly for a film set in college, makes zero mathematical sense.

Nonetheless, it drops in an eerie twist in a post-credits sequence that might have thrilled viewers earlier on in the film because it actually pays off nicely on a red herring.

But in the end, with its pervy photography and dull plot that hits all the basic notes used in past genre efforts – including the one where seemingly out of nowhere Couture finally puts it all together just in the nick of time – when it comes to serving up scares, it's all Greek to The Row.

Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Movie Review: Dead Night (2017)

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Original Title: Applecart

Opening with a scene of traditional horror movie date bait as a couple is attacked at a lover's lane in the 1960s before jumping ahead fifty years and settling into a haunted cabin in the woods storyline, the first act of Dead Night gives viewers the feeling that first time feature filmmaker Brad Baruh is aiming for a Genre's Greatest Hits mixtape vibe.

Built on a deposit of iron oxide said to have the ability to "realign everything that's wrong with you," even though she practices western medicine as a hospital nurse, Casey Pollack (Brea Grant) rents the desolate cabin as a last ditch effort to try and cure her dying husband, James (AJ Bowen).

Arriving with the couple's two teenage children (Sophie Dalah and Joshua Hoffman) and their daughter's friend, Becky (the most likable teen of the lot, played by Elise Luthman) also in tow, as the family settles into what we fear might be their final destination after the long drive, we realize that both inside the cabin and out in the woods, something is very, very wrong.

An old-fashioned yet compelling start, rather than let the story unfold naturally as a work of slow burn horror, Dead Night inexplicably cuts to an Unsolved Mysteries style true crime series airing simultaneously on a handful of TV screens in the middle of the woods that suggests that one or more of our characters might not be as innocent as they seem.

Revealing far too much too fast, including at least one (potentially) major plot twist, while the dueling narrative gimmick might've sounded good on paper, onscreen it just comes across as laughably, pointlessly cheesy given the sight of those old-fashioned TVs in the snow.

Losing us just as Night's suspense should've reached its peak after the family discovers local politician – and rudest houseguest ever – Leslie Bison (well played by Barbara Crampton) face down in the snow, although there’s some initial excitement when things turn violent and the remaining survivors try their best to fight, run, and hide to stay alive, sadly, it doesn't last long.

Given a major narrative overhaul after the film – then called Applecart – bombed at Fantastic Fest, I can only hope that this configuration makes more sense. Unfortunately because Irving Walker's script boasts nearly as many ideas as it has disparate threads, without some new reshoots to fill in for Dead Night's spoiler filled, tacky TVs (just to name one problem), all the editing in the world will be unable to bail this one out.

With a script you can't follow from Points A to B because it keeps looking for a shortcut in Y or Z, despite some strong (though admittedly gruesome) special effects and a talented cast of genre veterans, in the end, Dead Night feels like a five-part anthology horror movie chopped up and spliced back together as one.

In other words? If you have a deposit of iron oxide, I have a movie that needs to be realigned.

Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Blu-ray Review: Free Fall (2014)

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On Blu-ray, DVD, and VOD  

Even without saddling him with the Ayn Rand epic-worthy name of Thaddeus Gault, as soon as we see that the man embodying the far-too-smooth, selfishly shady CEO at the heart of Free Fall is none other than iconic screen villain Malcolm McDowell, we know right from the start that he’ll be the one calling all the shots of the suspense that should – by all rights – follow.

Unfortunately Fall’s screenwriter and editor in particular don’t seem to have the same faith in the viewers (or the movie’s every-woman heroine Jane Porter played by I Spit on Your Grave actress Sarah Butler) that we initially had in them.

Rather than build upon that unsettling wave of terror established in the span of a handful of frames as a body lands on top of a car in the opening sequence, the filmmakers slow the action down to a crawl and leave it there for roughly twenty minutes.

And while there’s a great film to be found in Free Fall – the one that made it to the final cut of this recently released Anchor Bay Blu-ray isn’t it.

Spending entirely too much of the film’s ever-critical first act slowly connecting the John Grisham Firm-like dots of the corporation’s evil practices from fraud to the fatally forced retirement plans for professionals unwilling to look the other way (such as Jane’s recently deceased mentor), Free Fall misgauges the strengths of what should’ve simply been a Red Eye, Panic Room, or P2 style thriller.

Instead of watching Jane try to make it out of her workplace alive after she finds herself trapped in an elevator based game of chicken with D.B. Sweeney’s crisis management executive (aka Gault’s hired hitman), Free Fall inspires yawns and apathy with dull office posturing and politics early on.

Likewise, following the cat-and-mouse excitement that arises once Sweeney reveals his true intentions, Free Fall goes against the genre tradition of empowering women to try and save themselves. All but giving up on the heroine once she hits the elevator, the filmmakers bring in a likable but wholly unnecessary new character for the awkward final half without bothering to fully flesh out either role.

While McDowell’s casting as Thaddeus Gault is a bit too on the nose, it’s interesting for Cutting Edge star Sweeney (who intriguingly once brought the character of Rand’s John Galt to cinematic life in an adaptation of Atlas Shrugged) to be given the role of the heavy even if the script offers him very little to do.

Not realizing that the thing that makes movies like P2 and Panic Room work so well is their sense of “you are here” visceral urgency that makes us imagine what we’d do if we were all in our heroine’s place, while the actors all give it their best shot, unfortunately the film never manages to ignite a single spark.

To its credit however, it is helped along by a few glimmering flickers from Jonathan Hall’s gorgeously crisp and nicely contrasted wood and steel toned cinematography to a few tense moments of man vs. man or Jane vs. ruthless businessmen action, which do their damndest to distract us from the otherwise wooden script.

While Free Fall manages to hold your interest as an inefficient yet nonetheless ambitious workmanlike yarn in desperate need of a rewrite, overall you’re much better off selecting one of those other – not quite real-time but all-in-one-night – vastly superior reality driven horror stories.

An inauspicious directorial effort from Halloween franchise producer Malek Akkad that’s filled with clumsy gaps in logic (from an endless bullet supply to a head-scratcher of a reference to a character we’ve never met in a pivotal scene), Free Fall sets itself up to be a great source of elevator based horror but ultimately it's as trapped as our heroine is with no chance of easy escape.

Having been stuck in an elevator in real life (with a nine month pregnant woman during a power outage no less), I can certainly attest that the emotionally charged setting is ripe for horror before you even add to it.

Nonetheless, the vantage point of a young woman playing chicken with a corporate hitman from a panic room-like steel cage trapped between two floors is far more thrilling than any CSPAN worthy paradigm… regardless of its villain’s last name.

Text ©2014, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

Blu-ray Review: Devil's Due (2014)

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While leaving a message for his bride on his ever present video camera with which Zach McCall (Zach Gilford) has pledged to document the start of their new life together, he makes a promise to the lovely Sam (Allison Miller) that he will always protect her and keep her safe.

But as we learn not even twenty minutes into Radio Silence filmmakers Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s demonic baby chiller Devil’s Due, Zach has spoken much too soon after a bizarre night on their honeymoon in the Dominican Republic finds his wife not only pregnant but acting completely different from her usual self.

Arriving on disc a full month before NBC premiered their own thematically similar miniseries remake of Roman Polanski’s 1968 horror classic Rosemary’s Baby, while Devil’s Due takes you down familiar terrain by playing deliberate and at times humorously tongue-in-cheek homage to Polanski’s original, it’s pieced together in a way that’s less stagey and far more naturalistic.

Much like Fox’s Chronicle (with whom Devil shares a producer), the movie’s classification as a work of pure found footage horror is up for debate since multiple source videos are somehow edited together by "unknown parties" in addition to an online sequence wherein some footage is erased.

Nonetheless, if you’re willing to ease up on the strict qualifications and rules or regulations of paint-by-number genre mandates, you’ll find a truly impressive and pretty damn effective example of low budget, do-it-yourself horror made to just sit back and enjoy. (And in all actuality, with far too many mock-docs on the horror shelf, it’s about time filmmakers started easing up and/or rewriting the rules to keep things interesting.)

Admittedly predictable, although the directors realize there’s simply no getting around the fact that we’ve all seen this movie before, they do their best to take each opportunity they have to ratchet up the tension or offer a unique spin on the tried and true formula of Lindsay Devlin’s script.

And this is evident in the clever Kubrickian inspired twisted delight they take in serving up a spine-tingling Motown era musical counterpoint where the lyrics of the catchy “Oogum Boogum" foreshadow and later provide a commentary on the eerie events that follow.

Likewise, making the most of its unusual natural camera-centric focus by tapping into grocery store and parking lot security cameras for two jaw-dropping scenes, Devil’s Due illustrates the truism that necessity really is the mother of invention in forcing the helmers to think outside the box.

While it had the potential makings of a much more original storyline by alluding early on to the fact that Sam had no memory of her parents who died in a car crash before abandoning that thread altogether, far too often, Devlin’s script retreats back into the expected realm of a Rosemary’s Baby retread instead of daring to pay-off on that unique premise.

Although it doesn’t achieve the same level of success that D.J. Caruso’s Disturbia did in providing a contemporary, new take on an old classic with Caruso's thrilling tribute to Hitchcock’s Rear Window that provided viewers with a creepier comeuppance and a fresh point-of-view, overall the filmmakers make the most of what they’ve been given.

Augmented by the emphasis on Hitchcock-like voyeurism that fills the second half as more camera flood the lives of our characters without their knowledge, Devil’s Due amps up the suspense considerably by using the strategy to capture eerie scenes both in and outside the couple’s home as they’re hounded by the eyes of Big Brother everywhere.

With an exceptional Holy Communion centerpiece sequence that infuses the work with shades of The Exorcist, while most filmmakers would’ve blown most of their budget on a big CG payoff there, the film is that much more arresting given the helmers’ strong dedication to documenting the events with understated realism.

And while there’s nothing earth-shattering about the work as a whole, it’s saved by these little artistic flourishes that keep us invested.

Filled with flashes of innovation and intriguing shifts in first person camera point-of-view by those behind the camera, as we watch the increasingly desperate Zach attempt to make good on his wedding day promise to keep his wife safe, come hell, high water, unholy cab drivers or baby antichrists, we realize that the Devil’s due is truly in the details.
   

Text ©2014, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

Movie Review: Scream Park (2012)

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Like the haunted house set we first see at the start of writer/director Cary Hill’s debut feature Scream Park, a horror-themed amusement park seems like a natural location upon which to build a slasher movie.

And in using the same ingredients in plot, character and structure that have pervaded the genre since its late ‘70s/early ‘80s post-Halloween screaming virginal teenage girl-centric heyday, that’s exactly what Hill does in this old-school horror movie.

In addition to using the same paradigm, Scream Park harks back to the era from start to finish by including technological and cultural touchstones from boom-boxes to the type of punks that Corey Feldman would’ve played three earlier alongside modern-day conveniences like cell phones and motion-detection lights.

While we’re confused by the early introduction to way too many similar characters at the same time, we’re quickly charmed by Park’s obligatory nice, smart girl lead Jennifer (capably portrayed by Wendy Wygant).

Unfortunately (aside from one or two exceptions) the rest of the teens that round out the ensemble group of soon-to-be-victims are very one-dimensional. And adding insult to injury for Hill's film, they're played with such little skill in performances that run the gamut from over-emphasis to mumbled line-readings

Initially, because the roles that they inhabit fill a one-word description so well, I wondered if perhaps they might have been intended as exaggerated satirical genre caricatures of the same type of “princess” and “athlete” archetypes that filled the seminal John Hughes ‘80s classic, The Breakfast Club. However, the satirical theory fizzled as the killing took center stage and Hill's teen movie switches gears, focusing on the cat-and-mouse game that is being played around the park.

Needless to say, Hill’s film is at its best when he keeps things simple both for the actors and the viewers as just when we’ve begun to be able to tell the characters apart (despite not knowing a few names), the horror begins.

With more money, a more talented cast, slicker special effects and much better lighting (to the point that  at times I had to squint in my most vibrant color temperature settings), the film could’ve easily become a modern cult hit.

Yet as it stands in spite of its technical and professional limitations, the downright entertaining Scream Park scored a hit among genre film festival goers who no doubt responded to its obvious knowledge of and affection for the films that paved the way while sitting back to enjoy Hill's ride.

While I kept thinking about just how damn good the film could’ve been if only it had a script punch-up (or fill-in-the-blank), the one thing that kept me interested was just how well-timed and ingenious it was of Hill to venture quite far back into the past to take on such a monster of a project for his first time out.

And this is doubly refreshing and impressive when you realize that far too many of his contemporaries are overcrowding the marketplace with found-footage, do-it-yourself horror movies. With this in mind, any attempt to reinvigorate the genre is more than welcome and that's exactly the itch that's scratched by Scream Park.

Reminiscent in spirit of Ti West’s debut effort and ‘80s era throwback, The House of the Devil, I only hope that with more funds, experience and talented new collaborators, Hill will embark on a career with a similar word-of-mouth appeal.

For regardless of its flaws, Scream Park is Saturday midnight screening fun and Hill knows his audience well – no doubt as a filmmaker weaned on the rollercoasters of genre classics the same way those who lived in Anaheim were weaned on the rollercoasters at Disneyland.

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